http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2011/11/27/opensource-edible-landscapes-the-todmorden-story/
If you’re particularly into bad news, there are many places that will indulge your particular interest today. This is not one of them. Here, I want to spend a little time on things that give me hope for humanity, things that have an uplifting effect on me; things that remind me that I have much to be thankful for, things that make my heart sing with joy. Like Todmorden. Todmorden is a old Domesday-Book-mentioned market town that is in both Lancashire as well as Yorkshire (depending on which side of the Calder you’re standing), with about 15,000 people and almost as many ways to pronounce its name (though the locals apparently just call it Tod). I’ve never been there. But I will. Soon. This post will tell you why. Sometime in 2009, I’d seen coverage of something happening in Todmorden that intrigued me. Locals there had apparently agreed to work together to try and become self-sufficient from the perspective of food. Their initial focus was on fruit and […]
Category Archives: Food
Arjen’s Chilli Chocolate Shortbread
Ingredients
- 250g baking butter (variety with salt and cream), softened
- 2/3 cup icing sugar
- 2 cups plain flour
- 1 cup gluten free flour (contains tapioca as well as rice flour), this will create a nicer texture compared to the usual plain rice flour!
- 1 tbsp cacao
- 1 tsp chilli powder
Instructions
- Mix all ingredients together until the texture of the mixture resembles breadcrumbs – food-processor or hand-held electric mixer work best.
- Form dough by pressing together.
- Roll a decent chunk of the dough out on board dusted lightly with flour (approx 5mm thick, but more will work fine too although it may affect baking time).
- Cut out shapes, transfer to baking tray(s) also lightly dusted with flour. Works best if you grab the off-cuts from the outside rather than from the side of the shapes.
- Recycle off-cuts (via step 2) until all dough used.
- Bake at 160’C for about 30 minutes. Cookies should be dry and firm but not gone dark.
- Cool on wire rack.
- Keep in a metal cookie tin to keep fresh – although I’m quite sure they won’t last very long ;-)
Notes
- Quantity: number of cookies of course depends entirely on shape, size and thickness.
- Vegan: use vegetable based butter (such as Nuttelex) – you may need to add a pinch of salt.
- Gluten-free: substitute the regular flour with same amount of gluten free flour.
- Recipe neatly in line with Arjen & Stewart’s essential food groups ;-)
- Best not nibble the dough, uncooked tapioca (cassava) contains toxins. It’s fairly dry anyway, so quite unlike cake mix it won’t really stick to the processing equipment. Just bake and enjoy!
This recipe is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Almond Pie
At the end of another ABC program, I saw a short item from 2004 called Wicked about chefs’ favourite dessert recipes. It had actor and food author Vincent Schiavelli telling about a recipe from one of his friends back home in Sicily. It’s in a book of his “Many Beautiful Things”. The recipe is also at http://www.lifestylefood.com.au/recipes/10987/crostata-i-miennuli-almond-pie. It’s a shortcrust pastry with marmelade at the bottom then topped with an almond paste filling, and blanched almonds on top. So, this is a Sicilian recipe (almonds were introduced there about 1200 years ago from the Orient and have spread as far as Scandinavia since).
Now what’s really intreresting is variations of this pie are very common in The Netherlands for food around the time of St.Nicholas (early December). I can buy it at the local Dutch shop, but as you know I try to cook most things myself these days, so I know how it’s done. I know of two main variations, one is “filled speculaas” which is essentially two layers of gingerbread (with lots of cinnamon and cloves added) with an almond past filling in between. But the other one is more interesting: a roll of pastry, with almond filling inside, and generally on top: marmelade, blanced almonds, and optionally glace cherries. The shape is either a stick (resembling the staff of St.Nick) or curved in to an S (for Sint). It’s called a “banketstaaf” or “banket letter”. But isn’t the resemblance of these recipes remarkable… it’s like the pie has been adapted into another shape for the festive purpose!
By the way, it’s completely yummie. Not least, of course, because it’s full with sugar and butter, not to forget the almonds ;-)
And on that note, when I first made the stick recipe and ate some straight out of the oven, it tasted different from what I was used to. When I’d let it cool and warmed it again later to have more, it tasted exactly like I remembered from NL. So whatever I’d ever bought before had never been “fresh” out of the oven. Funny. But, the cooled-reheated actually does taste better! And guess what, the pie instructions also note that you should leave it cool/rest for about a day after baking. So there you go.
I don’t yet know how this fits in terms of the etymology of the Sinterklaas recipes, but there’s bound to be a connection somewhere…
Economic sense can taste better! Organic outperforms Conventional/GM
Organic outperforms conventional as well as GM over time – and is more profitable even when discounting the premium usually paid for organic produce (because of lower input costs, among other things).
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/business/Study+debunks+myths+organic+farms/5462520/story.html
The results are in from a 30-year side-by-side trial of conventional and organic farming methods at Pennsylvania’s Rodale Institute. Contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure.
Alternative Food Groups
A few years ago, my good friend Stewart Smith (a vegan) and I (omnivore at the time, now vegetarian) came up with an alternative to the traditional food pyramid for balanced eating, visualised here for the first time:
We both love food, and we figured that regardless of whether you eat meat or follow other dietary needs/choices, you will choose foods based on essentials like flavour and texture, and that’s what these groups provide.
Fat is key factor in food texture, sugar provides flavour whereas salt is an essential flavour enhancer (in moderation – you know you can even add a tiny bit of salt to hot chocolate/cocao to bring out the flavour?)
Stimulants (caffeine, alcohol) are not essential but do deliver a nice extra aspect to flavour, and chocolate (more accurately, cacao) can be regarded as a wildcard (depending on the purity, containing fat and sugar as well).
Still doubtful? Name me a food that does not contain one or more of the above, and what you think about it? Some food and drinks covers all groups – and aren’t they awesome!